Tuesday, 11 December 2012

Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella is a Soviet science fiction film from 1936. This silent movie had only a brief release in its native Russia before falling out of favour with the censors. It resurfaced to a wider world audience in the 1980's where it is now more commonly known as Cosmic Voyage or The Space Voyage.

Il Pianeta degli uomini spenti is an Italian sci-fi film from 1961. It's probably better known over in this neck of the woods as Battle of the Worlds and may well not have surfaced in its English speaking dubbed form until a couple of years later. It's plot is pure B movie cheese.

A runaway asteroid mysteriously begins orbiting the Earth and threatens it with lethal flying saucers. If seen at the right age, I can't imagine what more you would want from a movie.

Sunday, 9 December 2012

I was talking to a friends about Countdown (1968) yesterday and after a few minutes we realised he was thinking about another film. Although he was fairly sure it was called countdown too. We talked the plot through and after a while we reckoned it must be this one.

Marooned is perhaps the better known of the two and has if not a similar plot then at least a shared technological peril. Three American astronauts are stranded in space when their retros won't fire. Can they be rescued before their oxygen runs out is the gist of it all.

It's another cautionary tale about the space race, with a countdown to disaster, a lot of melodrama from an equally stunning cast and of course the Russians put an appearance into the proceedings as well.

Futureworld is the sequel to Westworld so you want to like it but its not good. It's also the worst kind of sequel in as much that it cheapens and damages the original by association so we should probably just pretend it never happened.

All that said it's been a good twenty years since I last saw it and formed that opinion so if anybody wants to tell me I'm wrong and why its much better than I remember, I'm all ears..or should that be eyes.

Le Orme AKA Footprints on the Moon is an Italian film from 1975 which defies genre and divides tastes. I would like to think I have already stumbled across this film in the past but neither the images or plot have trigger a memory. I'm intrigued by what I've read so I'll just have to add it to the list of To-get-round-to-one-day.

Thanks to Traveller28 for the nudge towards doing this particular post. I always appreciate recommendations and suggestions.